


Wrecked Beneath The Waves of Grain

by kirkhammer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:28:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24793129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirkhammer/pseuds/kirkhammer





	Wrecked Beneath The Waves of Grain

It stood - not _quite_ , more slumped, like a fat dairy cow kneeling, sagging, heavy, swiping at a swarm of lazy flies with an equally lazy tail - in the dead centre of the field. And of the sky, stretched like arms above it and so vast and blue you might have, looking at it, forgotten what a cloud was. Right in the middle and between like a stone in a sandal. A bloody red rock. Even from here they could see the blistered paint, sanguine sap stained, and hear the screech of old, old hinges. The gaping black of the broken doorway. The glint of chain drawn across it, like a joke, or a challenge, or, bait. Neither of them wanted to think about _that_ for too long. Glinting dust whirled around them as the engine turned over, purred in the stillness. Behind them, nothing but an expanse of grass and rock, this one black road snaking through it like a final dried vein. And in front, well, the corn towered and an ancient wind shot whispers through it, secrets in a murmuring crowd. 

Michele had grown up in cities. Concrete and trash and wet paint. His whole world had been Loud. Trains and tramways, the clatter and ripple of steel, electricity hot and thrumming in the haze. He knew every shade of dirt a human person could make. He knew what it was like to sleep on the steps of a bank, to walk home with one shoe because the other fell apart, to hit someone in the face, with a bottle. At fifteen he’d built himself a bike, had seven tattoos, and been stabbed (for the first time). He’d been nineteen when he’d first seen a star, cut through the orange smear that had shrouded his whole life, that he hadn’t known to look for. He’d felt every kind of hurt you could feel and he was still here. There wasn’t _room_ for magic in his world. When he was a kid, he _knew_ that the noises he heard outside his window at night were people, because there were always people there to make them. He wasn’t afraid of the dark, or the quiet, because there just was none. He hadn’t learned to fear the night, or old wood, or voices in the cornfields. 

And now, he wasn’t, he told himself, over and over, afraid of this barn.


End file.
